Easy PayPal Affiliate Tracking

What’s more, the chances are pretty good that most of you reading this use the same tool for all of the functions listed above: PayPal.

PayPal has become as pervasive in our use of the Internet as the likes of eBay, Twitter, and Facebook—so it’s only logical that you want to ensure that your affiliate program uses the same tools you do.

LeadDyno can help you with that. Not only can we teach you to integrate your new LeadDyno-based affiliate program with all things PayPal, but we can teach you to create your own “Buy Now” button and integrate your PayPal merchant service directly into your affiliate efforts.

And the good news? It’s simpler than you think.

Create PayPal “Buy Now” Buttons that Utilize Your Affiliate Program

In affiliate marketing, there’s a rule that’s ignored all too often: make the purchase as easy as possible for your customers. If they get stuck scrolling and wheeling their way around your affiliate’s efforts without a simple “Buy Now” option, their Internet attention span (or lack thereof) will kick in and you’ll lose the sale.

Don’t blame the customer. You haven’t made things easy enough for them!

That’s why LeadDyno can aid you in your efforts to simplify your purchasing options and make them clear and obvious to the customer. Generally, there are two types of sales buttons you’ll deal with when using PayPal: subscriptions and one-time purchases.

The One-Time Purchase Button

For many affiliate programs—especially those that sell one-time products—you will only have to worry about one kind of purchase button: the single purchase button. You see it all the time when shopping directly from product providers online. Now it’s time create one of your very own.

Begin your humble journey with the following command chain:

Profile -> My Selling Tools -> Update (on the “PayPal buttons” row)

From there, you’ll be taken to the My Buttons page. There, you’ll see all sorts of options, including “Choose a button type” and “Item name.” (Note: if you’re not entirely confident in your ability to Internet and want to test this feature out, go ahead and create a test button for a product that doesn’t actually exist. Might we suggest a ‘widget’?)

Obviously, in order to create a One-Time Purchase button, you’ll want to select the “Buy Now” button type. As you go through each of the options, you’ll likely end up with something like this:

(Note: the red arrow is pointing to the item ID, which is a way of identifying the affiliate program with which this affiliate program is associated. More on that later.)

You’ll also have a few customize-button options, such as adding drop down menus and text fields. Feel free to play with these as well. (Generally, you’ll want to stick with the principle of keeping the button simple, but if you have something important to offer the customer, go ahead and include these additional options. But only if necessary.)

Finish up and you’ll have a button of your very own, ready for clicks—unless, of course, you simply created a test button. Either way, you now know how easy the process of spontaneous button creation can be.

Creating a Subscription-Based “Buy Now” Button

If you think subscriptions are more complicated, we have good news for you: they’re not. They’re simply a different type of button. There are a few more variables to kick in here and there, but they’re still easy to launch.

First, follow the same command tree as before. If you forgot what it was, here’s a refresher:

Profile -> My Selling Tools -> Update (on the “PayPal buttons” row)

This will take you to the same Create-a-button page in the previous section. Now, you’ll simply choose a “Subscription” based button instead of a “Buy Now.” This is where the road begins to fork.

First, fill out the information just as you would for a “Buy Now” button—except in this case, you’ll have to come up with a cost and length of a billing cycle. (A monthly subscription of $20, a yearly subscription of $199, etc.)

As in the previous section, you’ll be asked to come up with an “ID” for this specific button, in this case known appropriately as the Subscription ID. (How do you know what code to put in? Again, we’ll tackle that in a later section.)

Connect LeadDyno to PayPal to Get Started Right Away: The Commission Code

Okay, so you have an idea of how to create a fresh PayPal button. But maybe you already knew that, and you want to learn how to integrate these buttons with your LeadDyno affiliate program.

That’s where this added wrinkle will help. Integrating your LeadDyno program with PayPal buttons will ensure that you have all of the digital “equipment” for your affiliates to begin making sales right away.

So what the heck was all of this “commission code” talk earlier in this article? We’re talking about the specific commission plan that correlates with the product or service for which you’re constructing a new PayPal button. We recommend that before you get your button up and running, you create your own affiliate code. The code is a simple, one-word reference that allows you to configure and manage your commission plans from your LeadDyno dashboard.

Enabling the PayPal Integration

In order to track conversions and statistics from PayPal buttons with LeadDyno, a little bit of manipulation will be required. This can get a bit technical, so we’ll refer you to the “Enable PayPal Integration with LeadDyno” section at our PayPal Integration guide.

Bringing Your PayPal Affiliate Program Together

Linking your PayPal Merchant Account to LeadDyno will allow the seamless merging of statistics and your LeadDyno dashboard that you can use for years to come. Luckily, the setup process is not complicated—but it’s certainly worth getting right.

First, be sure to check out our PayPal Merchant Integration Guide. There you’ll find a detailed, step-by-step process for linking PayPal with your LeadDyno affiliate program—featuring screenshots so you’re not left in the dark.

But just to make things easier on you, we thought we’d suggest having some information handy before you begin this process:

Your LeadDyno Public API Key. We know what you’re thinking: “zuh?! Where on earth do I find that?” Don’t worry; you can find it right on your settings page. This key will be important because it will be part of a Notification URL you’ll enter into PayPal to ensure that your merchant account is linked with your affiliate program.

Any relevant information such as the LeadDyno affiliate code mentioned above will likely help. They may not be necessary for this specific purpose, but it won’t hurt to have them handy in case you need to refer back to your LeadDyno dashboard.

We hope this proves that you don’t have to be an HTML wizard to link your PayPal services with your affiliate program. The steps are simple and easy to follow; and remember, if you get stuck, be sure to refer to our PayPal Integration Guide and PayPal Merchant Integration Guide for a step-by-step review.

Or, Connect LeadDyno to Your PayPal Merchant Service

The integration between PayPal and LeadDyno allows automated tracking of lead conversion, cancellation and affiliate compensation for purchases made when PayPal acts as your merchant service.